Priorities - Kemper internal features or interoperability?

    Here's my preferred list of priorities:


    1. Delays (hopefully coming soon) and finishing the already announced morphing feature.
    2. Spring Reverb
    3. An extended period of time for the developers to do a major maintenance / rewrite / housekeeping of the entire Kemper ecosystem. This beast has reached a level of complexity over the years that (imho) deserves some in-depth cleanup to be all set for the future. The everyday pressure to develop and add new features and how to incorporate them in the existing environment pretty much always leads to an increase in hidden problems and flaws. I wish the guys at Kemper will get the time someday to sit back and analyze what they achieved and how it was implemented. I'm sure they will find ways to optimize and cleanup the existing codebase.


    Yes, my 3rd point doesn't sound very popular and a marketing guy will get close to a heart attack when reading this. The world always asks for more, more, more. :) I think the Kemper Profiler has reached the point where they can relax a bit (given that points 1 and 2 are done) and get out of this new feature rush. Kemper is selling plenty, the business is well and sound. Take a year off in terms of new features. Clean your house and prepare for whatever you plan to do after the period of housekeeping :)

    Internal features. For me, Kemper is perfect in terms of accuracy of clone amps (or simply getting superb sound of amps if you just buy some good profiles). In the area of effects, the kemper is a little less strong. I dont say that effects are bad (the delays maybe a little simple for me), but most of the profiles that I find are good sounds of naked (or almost naked) amps, with few or no effects other than a little reverb&delay. I'd like to have more flexibility with effects routing for example, and the posibility of change "set of effects" more easily.

    Internal feature for me as well.


    As others have stated, I sold off amps, cabs, and external effects in favor of my beloved Kemper.


    For me, ease of transport, setup, and stage foot print were the big deciding factors in replacing my VHT rig.


    I would like to see a better verb selection first (but I know this is slated last right now :( ). The delay's would be next. I do cover a couple of U2 songs that I am looking forward to a double tap delay for. I won't likely use the morphing feature ..... but I do plan to play around with it.


    I wont be needing any MIDI commands to control external gear since I have a simple 3 space case for my Kemper with a home built rear patch bay for ease of setup at my gigs. My life has never been easier with respect to gig setup and tear down.


    I find that the Kemper sound plenty good for live gigging. Does an Eventide verb sound better? Yep. Will the audience hear the difference live? Probably not ;)

    Definitely internal for me, particularly delays and reverbs. Right now I'm running a pair of H9s, with a Ground Control Pro to handle them and the KPA. I'm looking forward to replacing all of it with a Kemper Remote and rehousing my KPA rack into a 3U bag (currently in a 6U rack).

    Quote from viabcroce

    Not for much longer ;)


    Man, I hope you are right on that one ;)


    I always find myself wondering why anyone would want to lug a tube amp around IF they were aware of the Kemper. Loved my VHT .... hated the size and weight. Those 4x12 VHT cabs are way heavier than a MESA cab, and the Marshall's are even lighter than the MESA.


    For those still using an H9, you can understand somewhat why. It really is a silly good efx pedal and the Kemper has yet to match it. If they even get close, I will wet myself ;)

    Quote from OneEng1


    Man, I hope you are right on that one ;)


    I always find myself wondering why anyone would want to lug a tube amp around IF they were aware of the Kemper. Loved my VHT .... hated the size and weight. Those 4x12 VHT cabs are way heavier than a MESA cab, and the Marshall's are even lighter than the MESA.


    For those still using an H9, you can understand somewhat why. It really is a silly good efx pedal and the Kemper has yet to match it. If they even get close, I will wet myself ;)


    If they get close I won't care, because the H9 will still be better. Why pick an inferior option if you have the choice? The profiler is a great piece of kit, but there are effects that it won't ever do (the EHX organ pedals, for example), so outboard gear is never going to be completely eliminated for all setups - we buy this stuff because we want the particular sound it gives, and while the profiler is brilliant at replicating amps, it's not trying to replicate a particular effect pedal. There's nothing in the effects section remotely like the Strymon Deco I'm using, nor the EHX sitar pedal, nor most of the patches in the H9.


    No objection to new internal features of course, I love the profiler and making it do more stuff is awesome, but there are so many things that aren't implemented right now (the MIDI requests thread gives a good flavour of them) which would be really simple. Certainly simpler than implementing an H9 quality reverb, which I still suspect is outside the processing power of the profiler.


    Also for the love of god, why doesn't the mic input have phantom power? Seriously, you expect we're profiling our amps with SM57s? Grumble grumble :)

    Quote from tomoinn

    If they get close I won't care, because the H9 will still be better. Why pick an inferior option if you have the choice? The profiler is a great piece of kit, but there are effects that it won't ever do (the EHX organ pedals, for example), so outboard gear is never going to be completely eliminated for all setups - we buy this stuff because we want the particular sound it gives, and while the profiler is brilliant at replicating amps, it's not trying to replicate a particular effect pedal. There's nothing in the effects section remotely like the Strymon Deco I'm using, nor the EHX sitar pedal, nor most of the patches in the H9.


    No objection to new internal features of course, I love the profiler and making it do more stuff is awesome, but there are so many things that aren't implemented right now (the MIDI requests thread gives a good flavour of them) which would be really simple. Certainly simpler than implementing an H9 quality reverb, which I still suspect is outside the processing power of the profiler.


    Also for the love of god, why doesn't the mic input have phantom power? Seriously, you expect we're profiling our amps with SM57s? Grumble grumble :)


    Well, I certainly see where you are coming from. If it isn't better .... why use it?


    First, I have to say that I was actually NOT expecting the Kemper to meet or exceed the sound quality of my VHT amp. I was pleasantly surprised that it did though!


    What I really wanted was to reduce my load in and load out times, simplify my rig, reduce failure points, and take up a smaller stage footprint.


    I was actually willing to live with a marginally less good sounding rig since I am a true believer that only we guitarist hear much difference between one guitar/amp and another guitar/amp. The audience is mostly deaf compared to our discriminating ears.


    I would also be willing to live with marginally less good verbs than what are present in an H9..... in fact, I am doing so now. My pedal board is long gone and I carry only a small rack with my beloved Kemper in it (with a custom patch bay on the back for quick connect and disconnect in poorly lit venues).


    For those of you who tour at a level where only the very best will do, I completely understand your feelings. For those of us that are doing local bars on the weekend, the Kemper is already much better than what the average band guitar player is bringing to the venue.


    The Kemper verbs aren't bad as they are (for my purposes). I will be very happy to see them move up the food chain though :)

    I'm guessing that most people don't have an H9 or the rest of those things though, so for them cool new effects would be a no-brainer. Even if they did there's the convenience factor which may be important for some, consider it like this - I used to lug around a bulky camera on holidays, now I just take my cellphone, even though the phone camera isn't as good as the bigger camera it's just that much less trouble. For me personally for a gig the same kind of logic tends to apply, but I can see if you're a perfectionist or have a crew or decent tech to help out then it makes sense to go for the existing options. Of course the other factor is, who's to say Kemper would be trying to emulate an H9 at all? It can be as good or better and still not be the same thing, great reverbs come in many different flavors, the one that most people are asking for is actually a pretty crummy one, a fender spring verb, but it's a very specific sound and is great in a certain context.

    Quote from Per

    Of course the other factor is, who's to say Kemper would be trying to emulate an H9 at all? It can be as good or better and still not be the same thing, great reverbs come in many different flavors, the one that most people are asking for is actually a pretty crummy one, a fender spring verb, but it's a very specific sound and is great in a certain context.


    That's kind of my point. I'm sure Kemper can come up with some fantastic sounding reverbs, but if the one I want is on the H9 I'll use that (I'll also use the Kemper ones, because why wouldn't I if they're good?). The profiler does a great job making my entire rig fit comfortably into the boot of the car, but I have to have a pedal board anyway - if I'm playing sax it needs a mic pre so I've already got a board with the eventide Mixing Link on, and I need somewhere to put my expression pedals :)


    The profiler has never claimed to accurately model third party effects, so working well with those effects matters. It's not so much about quality, there are lots of effects the profiler simply can't do, and I suspect it will never do because they're very niche or complex to implement.


    Anyway, thanks everyone for the replies, looks like there's a strong consensus for internal features over pretty much everything else.